


scattered reflections

by wren_writes_things



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Agent Alex Danvers, Alex Danvers & Lena Luthor Bonding, Alex Danvers & Lena Luthor Friendship, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury Recovery, Kara Danvers Doesn't Know that Lena Luthor Knows, Lena Luthor Gets a Hug, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Lena Luthor Needs Therapy, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Lena Luthor Self Harms, Lena Luthor-centric, Oneshot, Protective Alex Danvers, Self-Harm, its not really that important to be quite honest, unclear when this is set
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 08:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wren_writes_things/pseuds/wren_writes_things
Summary: TW: self harm, talk of suicide, death, trauma, blood, knivesKara’s first thought is what hurt her closest friend, rather than why Lena hurt herself. She’s used to alien parasites and DEO secrets. Not this. Lena doesn’t have the heart to explain that nothing extraterrestrial made her do this to herself. Instead, she confides in Alex.
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	scattered reflections

**Author's Note:**

> please read the TW!

It was Kara who had found her, with her arm bloody and a knife in her opposite hand. She was carelessly in her office, where Kara was allowed full-time access from Jess, and she’d lost a little too much blood to think critically about that fact. 

Kara had walked through the doors with a paper bag of takeaway in her hands and a skip in her stride. “Hey, Lee, I brought-“

She’d dropped the food in shock. “Lena? Lena! Oh, Rao, humans bleed so much, I- Jess!”

Her assistant hurried in and gasped. “Miss Danvers...”

“Do you know where the medical supplies are?” The young woman nodded in response. “Good. I’m going to make a call.”

The next thing Lena was entirely aware of was more people, then being moved to the DEO. Her head pounded and she felt sick. Her head swam until she finally fell asleep. 

•••

Lena woke from her short rest to Kara perched over the bed she was lying on in the med bay of the DEO. 

“Did something bite you? Did you get shot? Was it a parasite? A chemical gas?” An unknown doctor was questioning her, scribbling furiously on a chart. 

Lena sat up in the hospital bed. “What are you talking about?” 

“Some way or another, you were influenced to cause serious injury to yourself.” Supergirl explained. She murmured to the doctor, “If it were a parasite, it wouldn’t try to kill its host body. Cross that one off the list.”

It was silent besides the young doctor pencilling in notes for a few moments. 

“You think... that something did this to me.”

“Are you experiencing any amnesia?” Her friend asked, a worried look on her face. 

“No. No, I remember it all, just confused. You think someone else tried to harm or kill me?”

“Well... yes? Obviously?” Supergirl frowned.

She clenched her jaw. How could she tell the truth to Kara’s puppy dog, big scared eyes? “Okay. I don’t know, then.”

•••

Alex came to check on her when Kara had finally cleared out. It had been unbearable answering all the questions in white lies, exhaustingly trying to protect her best friend.

The blonde woman had left with a, “I’ll be back in an hour with dinner!”

Alex leaned against the back wall, following Kara’s exit with her watchful gaze. The fixing her eyes square on Lena Luthor.“Hey, Dr. Kewing. Could I please have a moment alone with the patient?”

The doctor nodded and left, their notes clutched to their chest. 

Alex turned and shuttle door firmly behind her. Lena had an odd, distinct impression that she was going to either get murdered or interrogated in this locked room with only Agent Danvers for company. She wasn’t sure which one she wanted it to be.

“Tell me what really happened. What you couldn’t tell those two.” Alex seemed to stare directly into Lena’s very soul as she spoke, searching for any clue.

Well, perhaps she would have preferred murder. “What do you mean, agent?”

“I think you can call me Alex by now.” She sighed, perching herself on an adjacent bed. “Kara... she sees the best in people, alright? Sometimes that means she misses details. Even just obvious signs. Those wounds are clearly self-inflicted, and I’d hazard a guess that you weren’t under any particular influence to do it. Am I correct?”

Lena fixed her eyes down on the blanket. “Does a glass of wine count as being under the influence?”

“Jesus, Lena.” Alex replied. The silence in the long pauses between the two was deafening. 

“I didn’t intend for her to find out. It wasn’t... I wasn’t trying to kill myself, if that’s what you think. I know it’s objectively a rather bad coping mechanism, but that’s all it was.”

“All it was? All it was, Lena? You still could have died. Kara said she thought you were going to pass out when she found you.”

“It’s fine, Alex.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s not. This is the kind of thing that seems controlled and okay the first five, ten, forty times you do it maybe. But something always ends up happening, turning it worse. You can’t control it once you become attached to it, Lena. You can’t lean on this kind of weapon and expect it not to impale you right back.”

Lena intelligently decided against making a joke about impaling, right then. She swallowed. “You don’t know that. You wouldn’t understand, anyway.”

Alex was quiet for a few second before standing up and moving onto Lena’s bed. She pulled up the shirt on her arm to reveal what seemed to be fake sleeves, close to her skin colour, which covered the lower half of her arm. Arm wraps. “I cover it up like this. They scar forever. Really, it wouldn’t matter if they were the lightest scars, they would still stay forever. In your mind.”

“You... that’s covering...?” Lena looked up.

“Yes,” she pulled her actual shirt sleeve back down. “I’ve never had the heart to tell Kara. It’s not the kind of thing she understands. She couldn’t even see it when it was right in front of her today.” 

Lena breathed steadily. “I didn’t know, that you-“

“It was a long time ago, Lena. I’ve changed and moved on and the scars haven’t disappeared. Neither has the pain, at least to some extent. But I’ve learned to live with it. I’ve learned to rely on better things. Like people. Sometimes, of course, bottles of vodka... but mostly, people.” She joked lightly, gently, seeing the vulnerability still splashed across Lena’s face. 

“Why’d you stop?” Lena asked quietly. “Sorry, that’s probably too personal.”

“It’s a good question. At first, my only motivation was that I didn’t want Kara to find out. I stopped because it was coming into summer and I wanted to wear shorter sleeves when I caught up with her once it got hot. Course, that’s never really worked out. I thought about swapping to more concealed areas, but then I could only think how Kara would react if she saw them anywhere. If she ever saw me doing that... it would hurt her unimaginably. At that point there were no alien possibilities. So I stopped altogether. Didn’t stick, for a long time. I’d relapse and try again. It’s part of recovery, I realise now.”

“I don’t want to hurt Kara. She was never meant to know, I swear.”

“But she has superhearing, so she caught you anyway while she was patrolling. And if she were a room away, she’d see through X-ray vision. And if you were in an empty area, she might fly by and find you.” Alex ran a hand through her hair. “If humans like me could tell, the eventually she would figure it out with her powers, Lena. There’s no escaping that reality.”

Lena lent back in her bed, folding her arms. “I could stop. I’d just rather hide it beter.”

“It feels like you’re in control, doesn’t it? Sometimes that’s the very reason you do it. To take control of something. But it will inevitably take control of you, though it tend to evade your notice until... Until you’re sitting in a secret base hospital wing.”

“I control lots of things. LCorp, for one.” Her defensive tone failed to hide the fact that Alex had hit a nerve. 

“Ah, but that’s different from your feelings. Or the future. Or the past. There’s always things you can’t control, and it’s difficult to confront that. It’s difficult to acknowledge you aren’t responsible for all the bad in the world, but it’s true.” Alex shot her a meaningful look. “You don’t deserve what’s happened to you.”

“And what would that be?”

Lena had assumed Alex would shy away from that question, or maybe even leave. But instead, she replied bluntly. “What your brother did to the city, he also did to you. You were in that city too, and more than that, he has caused people to hate you for his actions. Your mother is absolutely past reason. And as far as I can tell... she’s probably never been the most stable and warm human being. That’s not your fault, either.”

“She took me in. I got pay back, I guess.” 

“You know Kara’s adopted. Mom never wanted vengeance on her for existing, she just gave the kid a home the best she could. I definitely haven’t always been the older sister of-the-year, but I also didn’t blow up a city over it.”

Lena genuinely laughed at that last comment. Alex was right, she had to admit. Lex was ridiculous. Lillian was a lost cause. And herself? She’d been a kid for the majority of it, then dealt with the negative impacts of simply having been around them for the rest of her life. Oh, of course she got the privileges of being a Luthor; the money, the education, the connections. No doubt that she was, in many ways, extremely fortunate. But then she got all the pain. The tears, memories, terror, stress, even physical scars. 

Alex finally smiled back at her. She cautiously put her hand on Lena’s shoulder. It was comforting, although awkward. Sweet of her. Lena didn’t come across kindness for genuine reasons particularly often. It was a trait she had only observed in Kara. 

They sat and breathed together for a while before Alex spoke again, softly. “I know you don’t want to, but we have to tell Kara something.”

Lena stiffened. She had forgotten about the precise mess she was in. 

“Hey, you don’t have to tell her everything if you don’t want. I could even tell her it’s classified or something, she’d whine about it but she’d get it. Still, we do have to keep you for at least a couple days for your health and safety.”

Lena rolled her eyes, but she knew better than to argue with just a weekend off. “Oh, great, quality time with this beeping machine.”

“And about Kara?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I don’t think I can bring myself to tell her the truth, nor lie to her.”

“Take your time. For now, it’s classified information,” Alex winked. She’d have to tell Kara something, she knew, but for the mean time, she felt safe.


End file.
